The Buyout

By Bru Baker

All Parker Anderson has ever wanted is to take over as CEO of Anderson Industries when his father retires. But when his father is ready to leave the company, he doesn’t plan to pass the reins to Parker. Instead, he plans to sell the company, jeopardizing not only Parker’s job but hundreds of others.

Parker finds an unlikely ally in Mason Pike, the company’s resident IT guru. What starts as a flirtation takes them from coworkers to coconspirators in a plan to forcibly buy Anderson Industries out from under Parker’s father. While they focus on the buyout, their budding romance has to be put on hold, but that doesn't stop them from flirting and teasing each other to distraction—and once their master plan comes to fruition, nothing and no one can keep them apart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
• Release date: Jul 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781623807757

Bru Baker

Bru Baker a eu un avant-goût de la vie comme écrivain à l’âge de quatre ans, quand elle a commencé à publier un journal hebdomadaire pour sa famille. Ce qu’ils appelaient de la curiosité, elle l’appelait avoir du nez pour les informations, et personne n’a été surpris quand elle s’est retrouvée avec des diplômes en journalisme et en science politique, et a commencé une carrière dans le journalisme. Bru a passé plus d’une décennie à écrire pour les journaux avant de sauter le pas vers la fiction. Elle travaille désormais comme référence et conseillère des lecteurs dans une bibliothèque du Midwest, bien qu’elle trouve toujours ça difficile de croire que quelqu’un soit prêt à la payer pour parler de livres toute la journée. Souvent, le soir, on peut la trouver pelotonnée avec un livre ou son ordinateur portable. Que ce soit pour créer ses propres personnages ou immergée avec ceux de quelqu’un d’autre, on ne peut nier que Bru est plus heureuse quand elle est captivée par une histoire. Son mari et elle ont deux enfants, ce qui signifie que nombre de ses livres sont écrits sur la touche de différents entraînements sportifs.

Book preview

them.

Chapter One

SOME days Parker thought the interoffice instant messenger system was a godsend—like when he was battling a deadline and could close out the outside world, not leaving his office for practically days on end. He was certain his assistant, Luke, didn’t agree, since Parker mainly used the technology to harass him from afar, safe in the inner sanctum of his office while Luke sat outside and was forced to act as a gatekeeper.

He had been in the office all night, catching a few sparse hours of sleep on his—admittedly comfortable—sofa before rousing himself at 5:00 a.m. to start anew on Anderson Industries’ proposal to buy out Johnson & Co., Ltd. His father expected it on his desk in twenty-five minutes, and Parker was going to be cutting it close to make the deadline, so it was with great annoyance that he realized Luke was instant messaging him, despite his orders not to be bothered.

LukeJacobs (08/14/2012 8:29 AM): Mr. Anderson wants you in his office in five.

ParkerAnderson (08/14/2012 8:30 AM): I have a mirror in the bathroom. I don’t need to make an appointment to see myself, thanks.

LukeJacobs (08/14/2012 8:35 AM): Very funny, Parker. Get your ass out here, your father wants to see you NOW.

ParkerAnderson (08/14/2012 8:35 AM): Is it wise to use that tone to your boss via IM, Luke? Hard evidence for your future firing and all that.

ParkerAnderson (08/14/2012 8:36 AM): And also:

ParkerAnderson (08/14/2012 8:36 AM): N

Parker Anderson (08/14/2012 8:36 AM): O

LukeJacobs (08/14/2012 8:37 AM): I have a key, you know. I could come in there and *make* you come out.

ParkerAnderson (08/14/2012 8:39 AM): I’d like to see you try.

LukeJacobs (08/14/2012 8:41 AM): Parker

LukeJacobs (08/14/2012 8:44 AM): Parker!

ParkerAnderson (08/14/2012 8:45 AM): Settle, Luke. I’m e-mailing it to you now. Just two copies at the moment, collated and stapled. I’m sure His Highness will have changes.

LukeJacobs (08/14/2012 8:45 AM): And you call ME insubordinate. He’d fire you if he saw that.

ParkerAnderson (08/14/2012 8:46 AM): Then it’s a good thing I know you’re unfailingly loyal, isn’t it?

LukeJacobs (08/14/2012 8:47 AM): Many refreshes have shown no document. Hurry up.

ParkerAnderson has signed out of chat.

Parker’s stomach dropped as he watched his computer freeze, flicker, and then reboot. He held his breath, counting out the seconds the way his friend Greg’s girlfriend, Jill, had taught him. She was a yoga devotee, and even though he still thought any activity that required that much quiet and contemplation was not a sport, he did have to grudgingly agree that her meditation techniques had helped him get a handle on his infamous temper. He’d gone through six assistants in eighteen months before Luke had come to him, and that had been four years earlier. He credited it both to Jill’s anger management coaching and Luke’s absolute refusal to take him seriously. It helped that Luke had known him since college. It meant he knew when to joke around and when to take Parker seriously. So when Parker threw the door to his office open, panicking as he bellowed for Luke to call the tech department to get someone up there immediately before disappearing back inside without another word, Luke calmly picked up the phone and did just that.

Parker paced his office, casting a glance at his blank computer screen every thirty seconds or so. That was the amount of time it took to pace two figure eights around his office, skirting the couch and the worktable he’d had installed a few years earlier, since his desk was far too expensive and impractical for him to bother actually working on it.

All he had to do was send it to Luke to be printed and collated. Fifty pages of research and strategy that were currently lost in the ether, since he hadn’t backed up the data anywhere else, and he hadn’t had a chance to send it to Luke before the computer crashed.

Crashed. Parker snorted, looking from the computer to the door again, his anger growing as minutes slipped by without the arrival of a computer tech. Anderson Industries had an enormous technical department, larger than most of the others at comparable companies, because Richard Anderson had been a programmer himself before amassing his conglomerate. As a result, he was willing to sink a fair amount of Anderson Industries’ operating budget into technology and the staff to maintain it. They had a stable of top-notch programmers as well, not that Parker had the faintest idea what they did. The tech department fell under Parker’s purview as vice president of operations. It handled maintenance and installation on all the things like computers and phones, and that was all he needed to know. His father oversaw the programming division, since it was part of the corporation’s research and development section. A section Parker desperately wanted to handle. That was the reason he’d thrown himself into the Johnson & Co. buyout; he needed to be able to prove to his father that he hadn’t studied business at Harvard just to be in charge of departments that did things like buy office supplies, pay the electric bills, and fix computers.

Parker growled when he looked at his watch. He had nine minutes to retrieve the report, print it, and be at his father’s office. He spent the first two of them contemplating firing everyone in the tech department, a threat he would to follow through on cheerfully if someone didn’t come through the door in the next thirty seconds to fix his goddamn computer.

Forty seconds later, the door burst open without so much as a knock. A tall dark-haired man practically fell through it, tripping over the threshold and nearly dropping the laptop he carried. Luke’s head popped in the doorway a second later.

Mason Pike here to see to your computer, he said, meeting Parker’s eye with a half smile. Sir.

Parker clenched his jaw, rounding on the man with the laptop and ignoring Luke’s teasing honorific.

Pike, is it? Do you realize who I am? I could have your job for your tardiness. When the vice president of operations sends for you, you drop everything and come.

Luke stifled a laugh and closed the door behind him, leaving Parker staring after the tech, who paid him no attention, making a beeline for the laptop Parker had left on the table.

You do know that I am your boss’s boss, do you not, Pike?

Mason ignored him, long, deft fingers poking and prodding at slots Parker hadn’t even known his laptop had. Within seconds, he’d turned it over, taken a screwdriver out of his pocket, and removed what Parker assumed was the hard drive. Before he could protest, the drive was dropped into a strange device plugged into the laptop Mason had brought with him.

I don’t have time for this. You were supposed to fix my laptop, you imbecile, not break it further. I’m supposed to be in the CEO’s office in— He checked his watch, his heart plummeting. —four minutes with that presentation. My future at Anderson Industries might not depend on it, but yours definitely does!

File name?

Mason sounded completely unbothered, which only made Parker sputter more. Was he too stupid to realize that Parker had just threatened to fire him? That didn’t bode well.

When Mason glanced up, an impatient look creasing his features, Parker’s fists clenched. Mason rolled his eyes, repeating the words slowly, as if he was talking to a not particularly gifted four-year-old, Parker answered out of sheer shock that anyone would address him like that.

Johnsonbuyout, no spaces.

Doc file, yeah?

I—of course. Listen, you—

Parker trailed off as Mason began to type furiously, his face lighting with a triumphant grin a second later. It took Parker’s breath away. With only a smile, Mason had gone from pale and gawky to outright beautiful. Parker’s mind processed the change sluggishly as Mason continued to type, then finally closed the lid on the laptop he’d been working on. He scooped both it and Parker’s laptop into his arms.

Where are you going? Didn’t I just tell you how important that presentation is?

You did. Although rumor has it you’ll never head up R and D without acing this presentation, so I guess my job is safe in the event you bomb.

Parker’s mouth hung open.